Has anyone tried doing anything meaningful with VCD or SVCD discs.
I have just tried to convert the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy from PAL Tape and am very disappointed with the quality.
VCD was almost unwatchable with SVCD much better but still not great, I suppose the extreme compression is to much to be actually watchable.
Darn, that means spending another $500 on a DVD writer.

Neither type is really acceptable, in my opinion, unless you use more than one disc. For standard SVCD quality, I think a two hour movie would come out on 4 discs, but the quality was quite acceptable to me. Sqaushing movies to fit on one disc (high compression) really kills the video. I was going to post a link to a site that had quite a bit of information on creating these types of discs... but it seems to have disappeared.

I do SVCD's of one hour and half hour TV shows all the time, and the quality is quite good. Of course, they can't be any better than the original source.

Well, vcdhelp does have quite a bit on it.

No surprise there. The site I was referring to was vcdhelper.com. But when I tried it earlier today (before making that post), it redirected me to something that certainly wasn't what I was looking for.

Edit: Thanks for mentioning it. It's the same site. Although I have no idea why, the url changed.

Darn, that means spending another $500 on a DVD writer.

I'm also looking to buy a DVD writer, and they cost about $320 - $380. That's for the Sony DRU500. I know, it's still a lot of money, but hey, it comes with the hobby...

I used Pinnacle Studio with a DC10plus and the resulting 13G avi was very good quality, but even an SVCD MPEG2 is noticably crappy and that is including splitting it into two 45 minute chunks.
I guess that DRU500 is calling me already.

I have downloaded some cool music videos and wanted to burn them to VCD or SVCD (whichever will play in my DVD player). Considering the files aren't the best quality, it'd be more of a novelty thing - but better than having people sit around my notebook. Anyone know a good program that will take these mpeg, avi, mpg, etc files and convert them? I have Nero but don't know what's involved to do it - or if it's even recommeneded.

I'm pretty sure Nero can do it. Probably with the wizard even. However, I've found that some music videos are encoded in pretty strange and obscure ways that might not be condusive to conversion. I'd experiment with it.

I'm also a huge music video downloader. I think I have about 7GB of videos, a few hundred in total. I think "Groove is in the Heart" is my favorite

Hi

Try TMPGEnc. Get it at http://www.tmpgenc.net/ Its free and will convert avi, mpg etc to VCD, SVCD, DVD compliant files in PAL or NTSC. You can also use this program to edit out credits etc.

What I really like is that you have the option to set your own data rate to fit more on a disc (at lower quality obviously) but still a nice feature. Nero is good, but doesn't let you play with data rates.

Nero Platinum will do it through the wizard just like creating an audio CD you drag the files you want over and it will convert them to the right format for you. I have made serveral using Nero and they dont turn out that bad, they arent the best quality but oh well

Nero is good, but doesn't let you play with data rates.

It does, just not to the extent that TMPGEnc can, and I agree, TMPGEnc is better, that's why I own it.

I have a problem. This thread started getting me interested in burning my videos to vcd. I'm using Nero, but I'm getting sudden crashes from the program. It's strange. I'll drag a file over to the window to add it, and the program will just instantly disapear. I looked in Ahead's support documentation and could only find this:

During Drag&Drop of audio data Nero .
This problem occurs with some Nero versions if the MP3 file used has not been created correctly. Nero uses a MP3 library which is very sensitive to files of this kind. Current Nero versions stop this problem.

That doesn't help me. I have a current version. It's the boxed version, for crying out loud. 5.5 I think. Any ideas what may cause this, or more importantly, how to fix it?

You've upgraded to the latest (5.5.10.0)?

Just as with the MP3's, that usually happens when there are errors in the original file. When that happens, I usually just run the original through TMPGEnc or the like, and all is well. I've found that Nero is very fussy about frame errors, desync's, etc.

Nero just doesn't like some files due to frame rates, sound bitrates etc.

Like Ricin says, using tmpgenc will sort out the video problems.